I believe the underlying argument is that if you're going to trample civil liberties anyway, you might as well do it in a way that saves more lives, as greater compensation for those lives enjoying less freedom.
If we presume a totalitarian state to begin with, then logically, it should abolish tobacco consumption before abolishing texting-while-driving, and the resources devoted to enforcing the former should be 100 times greater than those devoted to enforcing the latter.
The premise is that countermeasures should be proportional to the relative risk or impact. You could make a similar comparison between the War on Terrorism versus texting while driving, or even compare the former to putting non-slip adhesive strips in your bathtub. You could literally save more lives by buying non-slip strips for every bathtub in America, hiring professionals to install them properly, and replacing every last one of them every five years, and do it all with a fraction of the budget. But dying from a slip-and-fall accident isn't as scary as dying from a suicide bomber.
Anyway, the ultimate premise is that government should do things that make sense, which is why the argument is doomed to fail. After it has outgrown its initial idealism, a government first does the things that maintain its own dominance, and then does the things that tangibly reward its greatest supporters. Cold, hard logic does not enter into the equation.
If we presume a totalitarian state to begin with, then logically, it should abolish tobacco consumption before abolishing texting-while-driving, and the resources devoted to enforcing the former should be 100 times greater than those devoted to enforcing the latter.
The premise is that countermeasures should be proportional to the relative risk or impact. You could make a similar comparison between the War on Terrorism versus texting while driving, or even compare the former to putting non-slip adhesive strips in your bathtub. You could literally save more lives by buying non-slip strips for every bathtub in America, hiring professionals to install them properly, and replacing every last one of them every five years, and do it all with a fraction of the budget. But dying from a slip-and-fall accident isn't as scary as dying from a suicide bomber.
Anyway, the ultimate premise is that government should do things that make sense, which is why the argument is doomed to fail. After it has outgrown its initial idealism, a government first does the things that maintain its own dominance, and then does the things that tangibly reward its greatest supporters. Cold, hard logic does not enter into the equation.